Assignment 1: Content Help Guide
Assignment 1: Content Help Guide
Deliverable Key Considerations
Project Overview
2 slides maximum is a good guideline.
Statements are expected to be fairly high-level, so no need to go down to the lowest level of detail in your description.
Project Objectives
Focus on what it is the project is attempting to deliver in terms of outputs/products. See if you can make the objectives in the mandate more specific and potentially identify additional objectives or sub-objectives. Remember to consider the time, cost, scope and quality.
Expected Benefits
State the benefits the project is looking to achieve. See if you can make the implied benefits in the mandate more specific. Try and identify additional benefits for different stakeholder groups.
Estimated Costs Using the total budget number provided in the project mandate break this down into major (high-level) categories of cost e.g. xxx costs on staffing. xxx on design, xxx cost on equipment etc (a full budget isnt needed). No need to present a very detailed low-level view of costs. Estimated costs are only expected to be approximate, so dont worry about getting these absolutely accurate. However do ensure that all costs that you include add up to the stated budget amount provided in the project mandate and remember to include the total cost figure too.
Estimated Timescale
Include the timing of the major project milestones and deliverables. Think about the project as a whole and approximately what the project team will be working on and producing during the full project timeline.
Major Assumptions and Constraints should be included.
Constraints should include time and cost, but see what additional constraints you think my might be relevant (some of these might link to assumptions that you have made)
Feel free to make your own assumptions about the project e.g., those things that you think are true/going to happened and may impact the project. E.g. maybe consider team members, working hours, suppliers, funding, community factors and other expectations.
Key Planning Considerations (Planning summary)
1 slide should be ok but 2 slides maximum.
Try not to exceed 500 words in total for this section:
Communication Plan: Think about who your main stakeholders are, and why it is important to communicate with them and why it is important to communicate with them.
WBS: Provide an explanation of how you organised the work in your WBS. E.g., why do you think that your WBS is a good, logical structure to adopt for this project?
Activity list/Network Diagram/ Critical Path: Look to provide a summary of how you have organised your activities, key dependency considerations and impacts on the critical path etc.
Risk Register: Do provide a summary of your approach to considering the risks for this project: e.g., what are the categories of risk you considered, and consider what your confidence is in the selected risk responses for the most severe risks etc.
Communication Plan
Must use the template format provided to students.
1-2 slides maximum is a good guideline
Communications should consider the unique needs of the stakeholders who are involved in the delivery of the project and who are impacted the project.
Try and avoid generic communication items where possible e.g., do not just capture regular tasks.
Focus should be on capturing those communications that are likely to be the most relevant/value adding for the project. Consider different communication categories such as status reporting for different audiences, project promotion, expectations and change management etc.
Message mediums include: Face-to-face meetings, newsletters, reports, video meetings, marketing bulletins and advertisements etc.
WBS
Must use the template format provided to students.
2 slides maximum is a good guideline.
Needs to consider the stated project objectives and the scope items captured in the project mandate.
Must focus on the work needed to deliver against the project objectives.
The WBS is a logical grouping of activities and not a sequential view.
Each WBS box must be numbered.
The relationship between WBS items at different levels must be clear - as shown as in the A1 formatting guidelines template.
The lowest level of the WBS needs to describe what work needs to be completed.
Dates, costs and resource names should not be present on the WBS.
Note: A Gantt chart is not required for this assignment
Activity List
Must use the template format provided to students.
2 slides maximum.
Each activity must include task ID, duration and other activities (IDs) that an activity may be dependent on.
Network Diagram & Critical Path
Must use the template format already shared with students.
Ideally this section of your plan is 2 slides maximum, but an extra slide can be used if you are struggling with space.
Activities must be presented in the correct order e.g., with the precedences ( dependencies) present as highlighted in the activity list.
For higher marks (60%+) The critical path must be clearly highlighted. In order to calculate the critical path, all fields in the Network Diagram template must be completed (forward & backward pass) including early and late start and finish, activity number/description, duration and float.
Note: A Gantt chart is not required for this assignment.
Risk Register Must use the template format provided to students.
2 slides maximum is a good guideline.
Risks should be presented in severity order e.g., those risks that have the highest severity level at the top.
Do consider different categories of risk e.g., financial, timeline, quality, communication, resources etc. Your description of the risks should be detailed and clearly related to the specific nature of this particular project.
Risk responses need to be specific too - e.g. you cant just say you are going to mitigate or reduce a risk and nothing else, do ensure that you describe the actual action to be taken.
